Google files Nexus One Trademark Application

[Admin]

It looks to be official. Google has filed the necessary paperwork for the Nexus One Trademark. This will allow them to "officially" use the Nexus One mark and protect it on their devices.

The only problem? They may not have the rights to use the word.

Originally Posted by NY Times

As many bloggers have noted, the name Nexus One seems to be a reference to the cyborgs in the dystopian movie “Blade Runner,” which in turn was based on the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by the late Philip K. Dick. Both the film and the book feature a bounty hunter tasked with tracking down several rogue Nexus-6 cyborgs, the sixth generation in the line of Nexus robots.

But unlike Motorola, which licensed the Droid name from “Star Wars” creator George Lucas, no one at Google discussed the name with Mr. Dick’s family — and they’re not happy about it.

Isa Dick Hackett, a daughter of Mr. Dick, said in an interview Tuesday that she was “shocked and dismayed” by reports indicating that the Google phone would be named after her father’s famous characters. “We were never consulted, no requests were made, and we didn’t grant any sort of permissions.”

Ms. Hackett, president of Electric Shepherd Productions, the arm of the Dick estate that handles film adaptations and the licensing of materials, said, “In my mind, there is a very obvious connection to my father’s novel.”

The full NY Times Article is here.

We'll see how this plays out over time but I'm sure given enough money the name can be licensed, similar to the Motorola Droid, which had to license the "Droid" term from Lucasfilms.

[Nate C.]

Philip K. Dick's estate lawyers up, says Nexus One name is 'clear infringement'

By Nilay Patel posted Jan 6th 2010 4:15PM

We'd been hearing that Philip K. Dick's estate wasn't too pleased about Google's riff on the Nexus-6 name from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Blade Runner for the Nexus One, and now it looks like they're doing something about it -- Phil's daughter Isa told the Wall Street Journal that the name is a "clear infringement of our intellectual-property rights" and that their lawyers are "dealing head-to-head" with the situation. We're not exactly sure what that means: unlike George Lucas and the Droid trademark, Dick's estate doesn't have a trademark on the Nexus name -- and even if it did, we're not sure consumers would somehow be confused into thinking there was some association between Dick and Google. That said, we're pretty sure the smart move for Google is to just cut a check and earn some feel-good PR here, but we'll see what happens.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/06/p...e-name-is-cle/